Stourbridge director of rugby Neil Mitchell signed a new five-year deal with the club last week, and his team promptly celebrated with a win over Sedgley Park that kept their play-off hopes alive.

But even if Stour’s season does ultimately deliver promotion, Mitchell is fully aware of how much would need to change for his club to prosper in English rugby’s third tier which they exited five years’ ago.

“I have been at Stourbridge a long time ,” he says, “and have always strived to do my best within the funds available, but a huge chasm exists financially between National Two and the league above.

“National One is the top end of the community game, but you can never really plan to be there without having huge finances, otherwise you’re likely to spend most of your time trying to stay out of the bottom three.

“A lot of people look at it and think we’re just about where we should be with the finances available.

“You must have the ambition and drive to want to get to National One, and maybe one day we’ll be in a place to look at it. Something substantial funding-wise would have to come to Stourbridge for us to get to a higher level though.”

Mitchell says Stourbridge were badly hit when the RFU cut allowances payable to National One clubs seven years ago, and since then have relied entirely upon local sponsors.

“You need to be operating on somewhere in the region of £300,000 per annum to stay out of the bottom three in National One,” he says.

“For the first seven or eight years we were in National One we got £60,000 from the RFU, then when they decided the league should be part of the community game it was slashed back to travel expenses only, which is about six grand per year.

“We have a sponsorship committee working directly for the first team, and we get an allocation from the club, but although we have some very good local sponsors, they’re not substantial.

“Our type of playing budget is not big enough to put us in a mid-table or competitive position at the next level, as Macclesfield are likely to find out if they go back up.”

According to their director of rugby Stourbridge are one of the better-funded National Two clubs, but he says that only places them on a level playing field with more northern clubs, where players are more readily available.

“A lot of the teams north of us run with much lower budgets,” he says, “as their wages and contracts seem much smaller. Sandal claim to be an entirely amateur club, and several others afford to have second teams.

“We have to buy players in, as we’re in a very competitive area. There is a trio of clubs in the Black Country now as Old Halesonians are semi-pro, then there’s Dudley Kingswinford and ourselves in a very small region. There’s only so much we can pull from the local pool of players, which isn’t that big.”